he air in Lena Voss's Manhattan studio smelled like formaldehyde and bad decisions. She propped her laptop on a stack of unpaid bills, the screen's blue glow casting shadows over the jade earring resting on her desk. It had arrived that morning in a rusted tin box stamped with a Shanghai postmark from 1937. The note inside read:
"Your grandfather's final experiment needs a living host. Extraction scheduled for lunar eclipse."
Lena's fingers trembled as she adjusted the earring's hook. The moment the cold metal grazed her earlobe, her vision blurred. She glimpsed a Shanghai street ablaze, a girl in a tattered qipao screaming as liquid copper filled her mouth. When Lena snapped back, her cheek was pressed against the desk's edge, her lip bleeding.
The doorbell rang.
Through the peephole, she saw a man in a lab coat holding a frost-covered cooler. His name tag read "Dr. Henry Shen (1947–1987)". Lena's breath hitched. That was her grandfather's alias—the one he'd used during the Korean War before vanishing with a team of bioengineers.
She opened the door.
"Your molars are hollow," he said without greeting, holding up an X-ray. The image glowed unnaturally, revealing cavities filled not with decay, but with staticky gray matter. "They've been storing genetic data since 1943."
Lena recoiled. "How do you know my grandfather?"
Dr. Shen's smile didn't reach his eyes. "Because I am him."
He stepped inside, his shoes leaving no marks on the hardwood floor. Lena noticed his left hand was prosthetic—a sleek chrome claw that clicked softly as he set the cooler on her coffee table. Inside lay a jade earring identical to hers, its surface etched with what looked like circuitry.
"Your DNA is a palindrome," he said, plucking the earring from her ear. "Identical forwards and backwards. Perfect for stitching timelines."
Before Lena could scream, he pressed the earring against her temple.
She woke in a sterile white room, her wrists clamped in restraints lined with copper. The walls pulsed faintly, like a heartbeat. Dr. Shen stood over her, holding a scalpel engraved with Chinese characters.
"We need to harvest the latest iteration," he said, nodding to a glass tank holding a floating fetus. Its ears bore jade studs mirroring Lena's jewelry.
Lena's mouth went dry. "What the hell are you talking about?"
He tilted his head, the prosthetic hand whirring. "You think this is your first memory? You've been 'adopted' sixteen times before. Each iteration gets… optimized."
He jammed the scalpel into her forearm. Pain exploded, but it wasn't blood seeping out—it was black viscous fluid, steaming as it hit the floor. Lena screamed until her throat bled.
"Shh," Dr. Shen soothed, dabbing the wound with a cloth embroidered with twin dragons. "The 7B clone always resists. You'll thank me when you remember your purpose."
He lifted a brass bell from his coat. Its surface was pitted, as if scorched by acid. "This connects you to Twin 7A—the girl they sent to 1937. Her DNA is degrading. You'll need to stabilize her before the eclipse."
Lena's vision swam. She saw flashes: a girl in 1930s Shanghai being dragged into a basement, copper wires coiled around her ankles; a laboratory where scientists in gas masks poured molten metal into screaming mouths; a ledger listing names with dates stretching to 2143.
"Stop it!" she choked out.
Dr. Shen's expression hardened. "You don't get to say no. Not after what your grandfather did."
He slammed the bell against her chest. Lena's ribs cracked, but instead of pain, she felt a seismic shift. Memories surged: a laboratory where she'd worn a lab coat, injecting a serum into a writhing test subject; a child's laughter echoing through a bunker as alarms blared; the taste of burnt copper...
She woke again in her apartment, the jade earring back in place. The clock read 3:33 AM. On her coffee table sat a dossier labeled Project Adoption Time, its contents revealing a family tree where every branch ended in a name crossed out. At the center hung a grainy photo of two girls—one in 1930s silks, the other in a modern lab coat—holding twin babies.
Lena's phone buzzed. An unknown number sent a video: her own face, aged 70, staring blankly into a camera while technicians pried open her jaw to extract a glowing molar.
The screen glitched.
In the static, she saw Dr. Shen's prosthetic hand crushing the skull of a girl who mirrored her exactly.